


Death on a Doorstep

by stele3



Series: The Tether Series [6]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: (but he deserved it), Gen, Gross medical stuff, Jewish!John Silver, Judaism, Murder by way of a literal smallpox blanket, Slavery, Smallpox, Suicide Attempt, drug overdose, major character illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 11:32:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17980532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: Floorboards creak out in the hallway and Thomas drops the lid of the chest with a clatter, spinning around. Marielena stands in the doorway, pale and wide-eyed. There is a bruise on the side of her face, swelling her jaw and cheekbone.“I’m sorry,” she says.“For what?”“I’m sorry,” she gasps again, lifting her hands to her temples. There is blood and black dirt underneath her fingernails. “Dios ayúdame, he killed him.”-o-PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE TAGS. Notes are at the end.





	Death on a Doorstep

_~Philadelphia, July 1723_

 

As it happens, Mr. Denham is a most profound disappointment when Thomas inquires about obtaining a falsified writ of sale for little Erik. At first, he refuses outright to provide any aid and only reluctantly agrees to make introductions to another printer once Thomas points out that he knows Mr. Denham’s creditors by name and can easily get to them an anonymous letter pointing to Mr. Denham’s whereabouts.

The man to whom Mr. Denham introduces him is a Mr. Christoph Sauer, a German immigrant with a beard almost larger than the rest of his short stature. Mr. Sauer works as a clockmaker, pharmacist, blacksmith, and tailor; but he has a profound fascination with printing and, in fact, is in the process of _building_ one from scratch rather than importing the machinery. As such, he’s in a perfect position to falsify a writ of sale on his illicit press—and more importantly, he’s of a mindset to do so, as he informs Thomas in a monologue on the profound evils of slavery, a speech so impassioned that by the end, his beard has seemingly doubled in size.

Certainly, if Erik’s former _owner_ —his father—were to learn of the falsified writ submitted to the courthouse he might challenge its authenticity. More likely he will simply wish to pretend that Erik never existed. In any case, Erik officially belongs to Thomas, to be bequeathed to his cousin, James, in the event of his death. It is all very proper and civilized and if Thomas thinks about it too much he begins to feel sick; but Erik is safe, at least, and sleeps soundly by their fire every night.

“We’re going to need a bigger home,” James comments grimly as the six of them jostle about in the kitchen.

“Shush, I find the closer quarters charming,” replies Thomas, who has only just lost his employment with Mr. Denham.

And then it is May, and Mr. Sauer contacts Thomas for help translating a business letter. Thomas spends the night at it, sensing that the request is a trial of sorts; he passes, and Mr. Sauer hires him as a translator, and at his suggestion also commissions James for the foundations of his printing press. Suddenly they face the potential of lucrative employment, if only Thomas and James can keep pace with Mr. Sauer’s energetic nature.  

And then it is June. John and Rebekah spend two days decorating the house with greenery, reading the Book of Ruth, and eating cheese, all of which Thomas thoroughly enjoys: Ruth has always been one of Thomas’ favorite but it evidently holds a slightly different meaning in Jewish tradition. The Christian tutors that Thomas recalled of his youth had emphasized Ruth’s kindness and self-sacrifice, and certainly that is still unmistakably presented; but Shavu’oth, Rebekah explains, is about the transfer of knowledge and Jewish tradition, the giving of the Torah from God to Man, just as Ruth took upon herself the faith of her mother-in-law Naomi.

John mostly stuffs his face with cheese, though at sunset he does sing, faint and wavering, along with Rebekah.

And then it is July, and intolerably hot. Marielena, native to the Georgian colony, is the only one who bears up at all well. The others, especially Thomas and Rebekah, swelter and suffer. The upstairs is the hottest part of the house and so they all spend much of their time in the kitchen and front parlor, where Erik and James rig them a kind of large fan made of muslin pulled taut between two wooden slats. It’s strung up near the front window, with two ropes attached; one person seated on one side will pull the fan down, and the other pulls it back up. They trade off sitting near the ropes each night, fanning the rest of the room.

And then…

And then.

-o-

The moment that Thomas walks in the front door, he knows something is terribly wrong.

He’s come home with two books from Mr. Sauer, who would be much obliged if he can translate them into English within the month. It will be damned hard, and Thomas is already planning to ask Rebekah if it would be terribly offensive to put candles in la menorá out of season, if only for the light. He’s next to no hope of finishing it in time if he doesn’t work late, and even with the light of long summer days his eyes are…not what they used to be. Once they are a _little_ more comfortable with coin, he will see about procuring a pair of spectacles. First, though, they simply must find a larger home.

These are the thoughts that preoccupy the forefront of his mind until he puts a hand on the doorknob of their little bandbox and finds the door ajar.

Pushing it open, Thomas finds his eyes immediately drawn to a track of mud streaked across the floor. Something large and heavy was dragged from the front door past the table, through the hall and into the downstairs bedroom. Thomas’ bedroom, with James and—lately—John.

In the bedroom, on the floor, sits a chest. Its wood is half-rotted and covered with dirt, clearly the source of the trail it left behind. Two great locks once secured the lid of the chest but they have both been broken; when Thomas warily lifts the lid, the sight that greets him steals his breath.

There are a pair of pistols set on top, and without knowing a thing about firearms Thomas would say they look to be of fine make, with embellished pearl handles. They are the very least of the contents: underneath the pistols, as two maidens stretched out upon a bed, are bag of reales, doubloons, and pieces of eight. Thomas is the son of an earl, but this is by far the most currency that he has ever physically seen in his life.

Floorboards creak out in the hallway and Thomas drops the lid of the chest with a clatter, spinning around. Marielena stands in the doorway, pale and wide-eyed. There is a bruise on the side of her face, swelling her jaw and cheekbone.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“For what?”

“I’m sorry,” she gasps again, lifting her hands to her temples. There is blood and black dirt underneath her fingernails. “Dios ayúdame, he killed him.”

No. No. “Who was killed? Where is James?”

“He said that no one else needed to know. He said—”

“ _Where is James_?” Thomas demands, crossing to her and gripping her arms hard enough that she cries out.

“They’re looking for John! Lo siento, Thomas, él me dijo que no te dijera.”

“Tell me what?”

“Contara el cofre. John tenía una carta que le decía que buscara un cofre lleno de tesoros, enterrado en Society Hill. He’s been looking for it ever since he came here. He asked me to fetch James’ cart and help him dig it up.”

Thomas spares a quick glance at the chest. It absolutely looks like it had spent a long time in the ground, much longer than the length of John’s presence in Philadelphia.

Loosening his grip on Marielena’s arms, he bends down to put himself closer to her eye-level. The poor thing looks close to fainting from shock. “Maria. Dime lo que pasó.”

The story unravels thus: three days ago, John had asked for Marielena’s help in retrieving a buried treasure chest of which he had discovered the whereabouts, having followed the directions of a mysterious letter that Marielena had glimpsed and could only say had been posted from Jamaica. The treasure was sufficient enough, he had promised her, that none of them would ever want for anything ever again; however, his other associate in this venture must not discover that James is alive, due to an old enmity between them. Nor can James know of the man, or the treasure chest, for he would surely want to be involved and thus place himself at risk.

Marielena had reluctantly agreed and fetched James’ cart, riding with John to a lovely yet utterly empty house on the edge of Society Hill that was hemmed on one side by encroaching rowhouses and on the other by an apple orchard. The man who awaited them there, however, frightened her—he’d had the light of Satan in his very eyes, she said, and a cruel expression on his scarred face. She’d waited uncertainly by the cart as the two men had dug up the chest and brought it back with them, but the moment the chest was secured, the scarred man had moved as if to kill Marielena and cast her down into the open earth.

Instead he had tumbled there himself after John leapt onto the man’s back and cut his throat.

By then she’d been terrified, but John had soothed her, saying that she was one of the kindest and bravest people that he’d ever known, and that he was heartily sorry. He’d told her to take the cart home and not to fret, that he would follow once he had dealt with the body.

But he hadn’t. The last Marielena had seen of him, he’d been kneeling next to the makeshift grave, pushing dirt into it with his bare hands. Upon returning home she’d confessed all to Rebekah, who had helped her unload the chest from the cart then gone to fetch James.

Thomas takes her into the front room and sits her down, then fetches her some water. “How long has it been?”

“I think…three hours?” The water in her hand shakes badly. “Thomas, I am so sorry.”

“Do not be. None of this is your fault.” Through his own rising terror, he dredges up a comforting smile. “Come now, have a bit more water. I’m sure all will be well.”

Soon enough, he gives lie to his own reassurances and would have left their bandbox to comb the streets himself if Maria had not held him back, communicating Rebekah’s insistence that they remain home. “She did this,” Maria says, holding her hand sideways and awkwardly curling her hand until her forefinger points at the ground and the others bend in an arched row, like the buttresses of a cathedral. _Guard_ , the gesture means, their warning for watchful eyes peering through keyholes and a clawed hand holding the keys.

Where is the guard here? Or does Rebekah mean it in a different context? Does she mean for Thomas to be the guard, for the treasure chest in the bedroom and for young Maria? For once their silent language fails them—but if Rebekah told Maria to stay and meant the same for Thomas, then he will trust that much.

So they stay, and wait with growing dread as the long summer afternoon gradually fades into evening. Maria, unable to sit still, gets up to clean the floor; Thomas hears her mumbling prayers as she scrubs. He goes into the bedroom and wedges the chest under their bed, which proves a difficult task. He resorts to sitting on his bum, braced against the vanity, and pushing it with his feet.

They reconvene in the parlor to pick at bread and a bit of cheese, both of them too unsettled for a meal. Thomas begs the whole story from Marielena again, but there is little more to tell other than the name John had called his associate before killing him: Israel, which had certainly stuck in her mind. Thomas thinks back over what little James has told him of his time on the high seas but cannot place the name.

 _Damn!_ Never before has Thomas begrudged James’ reluctance to speak of his past so profoundly. John’s presence has loosened James’ tongue in more recent months, but they have only ever lingered on light topics, most frequently the fallacies of John’s cooking or the more amusing idiosyncrasies of their crewmates…though even that topic is liable to cause them both to lapse into mournful silence, and Thomas recognizes a memorial for the dead.

But Israel, whoever he is, was most certainly not dead until this very afternoon, and Thomas can only _sit here_ and wonder at his identity, if he truly was as evil as Marielena thought him. If he was some yet-living part of their crew who had followed the rumor of Long John Silver all the way to Philadelphia. If there were others who had done the same.

He can almost hear their feet beating upon the cobblestones outside—and then Maria is leaping out of her chair and Thomas realizes that it is dark and the sounds outside are not his half-asleep imaginings but the arrival of a cart.

They both rush to the door, flinging it open. Rebekah is there, her eyes dark and her shoulders bare. James is coming up the short dirt path from the cobblestone street behind her. His arms are full of a dark, limp shape.

It’s John. He’s unconscious, his head lolling and his eyes closed. James gets him in the front door with the stagger of failing strength and Thomas catches at John’s arm to take some of the weight. They nearly crash into the table, crockery falling over the sides as John lands on its surface. Their poor supper scatters everywhere.

Marielena makes to help as well but draws up short when Rebekah sweeps an arm across her belly, pushing her backwards.

“No,” Rebekah says, “we are leaving.”

“What?”

“He has smallpox.”

Thomas sucks in a breath off his own then looks at Marielena. She stands frozen, her rough hands—usually so quick to help—hanging at her side. In her mind, Thomas can only guess, she sees her father’s people: whole tribes sickened and felled by their weakness to the white man’s disease, their bodies left to rot or piled on fires.

“I will not risk you,” Rebekah says tightly. “Maria—I cannot risk you.”

“Then get out!” James snarls, heaving John up from the table like a ragdoll and carrying him towards their bedroom.

Thomas hesitates only long enough to flick his fingers at Rebekah. She makes an L with her fingers and tips it to her mouth.

“Bloody hell,” Thomas exclaims, and hurries into the bedroom, where James is hurriedly loosening John’s clothes. John has not roused. “Laudanum?”

“There was a bottle next to him,” James says tightly. “He took too much—he’s barely breathing. Fucking help me.”

Thomas hastens to obey, pulling John’s arm free of his sleeve. A blotchy, purplish rash covers the exposed skin of his chest, and on his forehead are unmistakable raised blemishes. God, what if he has already transferred the disease to Marielena? The illness can lurk in one’s system for days before the macules present…

Then Thomas realizes that John’s lips are turning grey, and all future catastrophes are shoved aside in favor of the current one.

“Push down on his chest when I tell you,” James commands. He’s put John on his back and Thomas has a stray, semi-hysterical thought that John _hates_ to be on his back underneath them—but John is unconscious, his skin waxen where it hasn’t been reddened with rash or marred by the beginning of terrible sores, and James takes in a deep breath before leaning down to seal his lips over John’s.

John’s chest rises with James’ breath. James lifts his head and nods, already drawing in the next lungful, and Thomas leans over John, pushing down with both hands on his pectorals. The skin under his hands is hot and slightly sweaty—the first fever. There will be another one, more severe, in a few days, accompanied by the eruption of sores; that is when convalescents are most likely to die.

Future. Not now. Thomas lets up and James breathes again for John, forcing oxygen into his faltering lungs. Outside, Thomas can hear Marielena and Rebekah arguing, then going upstairs.

All the while, John lies still.

They are on the eight or ninth repetition before James begins to look faint, himself. “Switch with me,” Thomas says, shuffling up the bed on John’s other side.

John’s mouth tastes foul—likely the product of macules infecting his gums and throat with pus. Thomas breathes into him as a blacksmith fills the bellows of his forge and does not allow himself to think of anything but this. James has regained some of his color; his teeth are bared and Thomas can see the whites of his eyes. “Come on,” he is saying. “Fucking God damn you, fucking breathe. You fucking shit. Breathe!”

Thomas counts eight breaths for himself before they switch again. As they do so, he looks up to find Marielena standing in the doorway, her shawl wrapped around her and a satchel dangling from one arm. Her face is streaked with tears; only Rebekah’s arm wrapped tight around her waist prevents her from entering the room further.

“James,” Thomas says. “Pause a moment and say, ‘I love you, Marielena.’”

James, who had been breathing for John, jerks upright and looks at the doorway with a savage expression that quickly fragments. Thomas leans forward, putting his weight on John’s chest. “ _Quickly_.”

“I love you, Marielena,” James says. “This wasn’t your fault. Go, fucking _go_.”

The next breath he forces into John is choked and inadequate. Thomas looks at Rebekah and asks silently if she has money. He tells her that if John has sickened, there may be others in the city, and Marielena must not go back to the tavern at a time such as this, and Erik must also be found and kept away from the house. He asks if she knows somewhere safe that she and Marielena can go, somewhere that _she_ can keep Marielena away from others, until they know for certain.

 _Yes,_ she answers.

 _Then go_.

-o-

Thomas has lost count of how many times he’s pushed air out of John’s lungs, or how many times he’s breathed air into them. Evening has become night and night has likely become early morning, judging from the grogginess that pervades his brain. They’ve long since been moving by feel alone, neither one of them willing to pause in their ministrations long enough to light a candle in this room. The lantern that Rebekah had carried in with her and left in the parlor has burned out.  

So he doesn’t hear James the first time he speaks, and is surprised when James takes his hands and pulls them away from John. Jolting awake, Thomas exclaims, “No, no, we can—!”

“It’s all right,” James says. He’s hoarse and sounds as ragged as Thomas feels. “He’s breathing. He’s alive.”

Indeed, John’s chest rises underneath his hands of its own accord.  

Thomas slumps sideways into James, who promptly nearly falls off the side of the bed. Together they manage to right themselves.

It’s too dark in the room, too enclosed—too like a cell. “Light,” Thomas begs.

James grunts and fumbles his way off the bed to the side table and the flintlock there. A spark, a spark, and then the flicker of a candle; in its dim glow, James looks ancient beyond his years. He stumbles back to the bed and Thomas puts his hands out to guide him down, so that they sit propped side-by-side against the wooden footboard.

Once he secures his grasp on the here-and-now, Thomas says, “James, what the devil _happened_?”

“He was in the Blue Anchor Inn down on Dock Street. Amos Inglewood, the fellow who sells firewood—do you remember him? He spotted Silver crossing the square this afternoon. They spoke only briefly and he said that Silver wouldn’t shake his hand, but went into the Inn. Amos thought he looked troubled and so once he’d sold all his firewood, he came by my store to inquire after him. We were already out looking, it was Erik who found us—fucking Christ, Rebekah and I were racing all about town trying to find him. It’s a wonder we didn’t raise any alarm.

“Once we came to the Inn, the proprietress…took some convincing. I think it’s secretly a brothel as well, and she was none too inclined to reveal a paying client, much less one who had paid for two nights in advance.”

Thomas frowns. “Two nights?”

“Yuh. I expect he meant to fucking quarantine himself there, the shit, and wait until the worst of the illness had passed. Meanwhile, delivering this fucking chest unto us, in case he _didn’t_ recover.”

Like a slow-breaking wave, realization sinks in. Thomas almost bites his tongue to hide the truth—but if John is to survive this, they both need to understand exactly what has happened here. “James. He only paid for two nights.”

Two nights is nowhere near long enough for this disease to run its course. It is, however, long enough for someone to dose themselves with far too much laudanum and perish before the pox reaches full bloom.

From the darkness gathering on James’ brow, he is coming to the same realization. “I’ll kill him,” he chokes. “I’ll fucking _kill him_ —”

“You most absolutely will not—not after the night we’ve just had.” James still looks furious, the kind of anger born of bone-deep terror, so Thomas rests a hand on his arm. “Catch your breath a moment, love.”

James grabs his hand, staring across the bed at John’s twitching form. Not for the first time, Thomas wonders what their life at sea must have been like: surely, they had faced situations as deadly as the moment they’ve all just passed through, and yet James looks thoroughly unmanned by the knowledge that John sought his own death. Perhaps their time in Philadelphia has softened him, or mayhaps it is easier to defend oneself against the possibility of losing one’s love to murder by pirate than by—

Oh. Of course. James spent eleven years believing that Thomas had killed himself in Bedlam.

Squeezing James’ hand, Thomas murmurs, “This was an act of love. Think, James. He had to know that we would care for him and that such care would greatly increase his chances for survival; yet instead he went away. And not even to ride the illness out on his own, but to seek a swift end that would have him in the ground before the end of the week, buried by strangers. A man with only one leg does not fear the physical agonies of illness, so I cannot imagine that he did so out of cowardice, and I think we can agree that John has an incredible determination to survive. So why?”

“Because he didn’t want to risk getting us sick,” James whispers, his voice grating painfully.

“Yes,” Thomas agrees, and it is a marvel, really, that his words still come out with ease even as his own heart splinters. Words have yet to desert him, though, and so long as he can speak he must believe there is hope.

For now, though, he lets them marinate in silence, listening to John’s wheezing breaths.

“What now,” James says at last. Pleading, as if—having spent the great force of his action—he, too, needs to hear Thomas speak.

“Well, first, you are going to thank me for insisting that you listen to the African slaves at the plantation and variolate yourself against the pox.”

Thomas pauses and waits imperiously. Despite everything, a smile ghosts across James’ mouth. “Thank you.”

“Secondly, when John wakes you are to immediately explain to him the concept of variolation, and assure him that both you and I are immune and Marielena is safely removed from the house. Then,” and Thomas breathes deeply. “We are going to prepare.”

The grimness of the task before them settles in the room. Among the white settlers, the pox claims mostly the young and the elderly; of the young and able-bodied it is less a mortal threat. Yet all depends on the particular strain of the illness: if the lesions remain discrete from one another, then he is very likely to live, but if they form a sheet or begin to bleed then…well.

Then it might have been kinder to let him die by his own hand.

“If he lives for two weeks,” Thomas murmurs, his hand still on James’ arm, “then with any luck, he’ll live the rest of them, too.”

James covers Thomas’ fingers with his own, gripping tight.

-o-

John rouses by degrees, his eyes blinking open but at first unseeing. He startles at their voices and cringes from their touch, showing in his delirium the fear that he usually hides behind sly smiles and slyer words.

Once he is aware enough to recognize them, James explains the process of variolation in curt, tight words. John listens attentively then croaks, “I take it this is vengeance for sending you to the plantation. Will you chain me to the bed?”

“If I have to,” James snarls. “You dragged me from the water over and over, would you expect me to do anything but the same for you?”

“No,” John says and rolls over to face away from them.

His feigned indifference does not last long, however, for soon the macules begin to spread, marching downward from his forehead to his feet. They are small yet, but they itch terribly and John does not shy from telling them so, loudly and repeatedly.

“For fuck’s sake,” he exclaims after Thomas announces that his clothes must be burned and James makes to forcibly strip him. “I’m not—fucking _stop_. Do not fucking lay one hand—”

Thomas hastens out of the room, leaving them to snarl at one another in favor of drawing tight the curtains and checking the latch on the door. When the pox had last visited the city—brought by those fleeing the great Boston epidemic—the city still had no almshouse, let alone a public hospital. There’s been talk of building an almshouse recently, but the wheels of government move slowly. Most of the sick had remained in their own homes; those unlucky enough to be seen in public with visible pox were driven out of the public square by force—frequently by projectiles, as no one wanted to get any closer.

There’s a thump from the bedroom and James makes a noise of pain. When Thomas chances to reenter, he finds John standing at the side of the bed, breathing hard, while James sits on the floor pressing a hand to his nose. His fingers come away without any blood, though it doesn’t appear to be for lack of trying on John’s part.

“You shit,” James says. The snarl is gone from his voice and he doesn’t immediately get back up.

Looking down at him, John’s face changes by degrees from rage to horror. “Stop,” he finally says. “Christ, here. I’ll get my fucking clothes off _myself_ , stop crying. I didn’t hit you that hard, Christ, Flint, look, here, here, here’s my shirt. My shirt’s off, stop crying. You like it when I take my shirt off, just ignore the fucking pox and you can pretend we’re doing this to fuck rather than the two of you playing nursemaids. Unless you want to play nursemaids while we fuck?”

Thomas wisely backs out of the room again.

They do manage to get John’s clothes burned, though they refrain from fucking. James recovers, though his anger has been snuffed out; in its place is fear, twitching between his fingers and underneath the skin of his cheekbones. It’s as if his emotions are too enormous for his body to contain.

Together he and Thomas transform their bedroom into as effective a sickbed as possible. Their clothes they remove to the parlor. What they want to keep they boil, the rest Thomas rips up into rags. Once the first boiled clothes are dry, he puts them on James and dispatches him to the apothecary for the necessaries: yarrow for tea, tansy to be mixed into a salve. Other than that, the best they can do is keep John’s skin clean, so none of the macules become infected, and feed him plenty of food and water. Thomas, having read Dr. Thomas Sydenham’s _Dissertatio epistolaris_ , holds no faith in treatments of bloodletting and the like.

Certainly, they did nothing to cure him of his desire for men.

By nightfall, John’s skin is covered with sores and his teeth chatter. He sits, naked, against the headboard with his legs splayed, his hands resting at his sides, watching them set out the teacups and chamber pot and rags with growing interest.

At length, once they’ve settled in for an evening repast—Thomas having set aside his misgivings on the subject of taking food while abed—he comments, “You’ve done this before.”

“I have,” Thomas answers. “A pox swept through the city of Savannah shortly after my arrival. Perhaps, one might speculate, brought by someone on the crew who carried it with them from England. I tended to several of the sick.”

James, damn him, betrays Thomas by casting a sideways glance. “Anyone in particular?” John asks.

Heaving a sigh, Thomas lets his bowl of stew rest on his bent knee. He’s seated against the baseboard, while James has elected to drag in a chair to set against the wall. There’s little space for it in their small bedroom, but Thomas suspects that James still feels tender about John’s attempt to do away with himself.

“I had a lover…a sailor. I’ve always been partial to men of the sea. Besides Rebekah and myself, there were four other patients who Bedlam felt convenient to send away, as well as two other men whose provenance and reasons for being there I never discovered, save that they, too, were intended to disappear from society. The journey took about ninety days. At first, we were kept apart by the sentiments of the crew, who had been told we were all dangerous lunatics and should not be spoken to. This was not helped by an unfortunate episode suffered by one of the other Bedlam patients, who heard a strange voice that commanded him to cut out his own tongue. Another time, one of the female patients claimed that a sailor had assaulted her, and created an uproar among the crew before recanting her story—though I don’t know for certain that it was false, after all.

“After the first month, though, things began to ease. You have both spent more time on ships than I, so I don’t need to tell you how the close quarters and the empty sea all around drove the members of our voyage nearer to each other. It felt, sometimes, like the rest of creation had ceased to exist. As though we alone were the firmament that had God separated from the waters. In that state of isolation, untethered from the world, the strictures placed on us began to ease and conversation began to flow. Conversation beget friendships and friendships beget—there was one, Nathaniel Conrad. A Cornishman. I believe he was a midshipman on the crew, neither handsome nor particularly charming, but he could read and that alone—God, he had two books, nothing extraordinary, a history of Scotland and Bunyan’s _The Pilgrim’s Progress_. The physician at Bedlam hadn’t allowed me any books on the grounds that it excited my mind. To read again…I loved Nathaniel for that, alone, and after some time he overcame his moral objections and returned my affections.

“We had two months together before we reached Savannah. We were meant to travel on to the plantation directly, but then the pox struck and we remained, either sickened or tending to the sick. Nathaniel...progressed very quickly. It did not help that he saw the illness as divine retribution for loving me, and frequently took a belt to his own back to show God his remorse. I do not know precisely when he died for he barred me from his room.”

John listens with silent gravity, aside from the hand that—halfway through—begins to scratch at his hip. This only lasts a moment before James sticks out a foot and kicks his hand away; Thomas half-expects violence to reignite but John appears completely absorbed in the story and at its end says, “I am sorry. Though I recognize my fortuity in this moment is divined from your personal knowledge, I think I would prefer that you never have suffered the loss.”

Thomas smiles and keeps his disagreements to himself. His Cornishman had been no John Silver.

-o-

The fever deepens and John shakes even in the heat of midday. They are well into July, the twentieth if Thomas is not mistaken, and though they are spared the wretched dampness of Savannah’s heat, they’ve drawn the curtains tight and kept the front door closed. The air inside is stifling and still. Only the fan in the front room saves them.

How easily the world narrows to their small bandbox, even over the course of three days, until it very much reminds Thomas of that ocean voyage a decade ago: their room and the front parlor, a small ship drifting through an unseen ocean, their destination still unclear and each other their only company.

Eventually, the world returns. A knock at the door freezes all of them in their tracks. John has been well today, recovered from the first fever and not yet into the second; the sores have covered his skin but remain small and discrete. Soon they will erupt and so Thomas is in the process of attempting to stuff an additional helping of breakfast down his throat while he still has some kind of appetite. James is boiling the sheets from their bed, when the knock resounds.

James looks at Thomas and Thomas looks at John, who looks at James. It is dusk, a late summer evening, though Thomas has to check the clock above the mantle in order to ascertain himself the time.

James straightens slowly from the washtub and faces the door with his shoulders squared. “Who is it?” he calls in a low, rough voice.

“It’s Erik, sir,” a voice says through the door.

They all exhale and James hastens to unlatch the door, though he quickly warns Erik not to touch anything and not to go near John. The lad has been variolated by his mother, certainly, but he might carry the disease on his clothes. He’s brought them food, including warm bread, dried meat, nectarines, and ripe cherries with dark skin, all carried in a satchel attached to his crutch.

More important than all, however, he’s brought news.

“Ms. Rebekah and Ms. Marielena are with the Aaron household. They’re all of the Abrahamic faith, but they’re friends with the Justice Miranda, who’s friends with the governor. Ms. Rebekah gave me the money for all this.”

“Bless you, Erik.” Thomas eagerly scoops up the provisions that the lad passes over, though he’s careful with his sleeves. “They’re well then? The ladies?”

“Well as can be. They both had the odd scarves on their head when last I saw them, so I think they’re pretending that Ms. Marielena is a _Marrano_ , too.”

That can’t last long, but hopefully by the time their charade falls apart, they’ll be able to return home. Erik’s gaze falls on John. “How are you, sir?”

John, who has adopted a languorous pose at the table, shrugs as if he hadn’t spent the last two days whimpering about his aching limbs and itching skin. By now the pox has covered him from head to toe, and clad only in breeches he has no hope to hide the evidence; yet he retains the ability to make someone question what they see with their own eyes, for he says, “I have the two finest nursemaids in the land, and thus how could I not recover?”

Rolling his eyes, Thomas carries the fruit and meat into the kitchen—best not to try John’s belly with anything more adventurous.

When he comes back into the room, the atmosphere has shifted profoundly: James is frowning at Erik and on the table, John’s hand has curled into a loose fist. Setting the bread down amongst the meager remains of their breakfast, Thomas says, “What’s the trouble?”

James glances at him but says nothing. It’s John who answers softly: “He wants to take one of the unwashed blankets, to give to his mother and thence to his former master’s bed.”

For a moment Thomas does not comprehend; once he does, he looks sharply at Erik. The boy shifts in place but does not quail, standing still under the regard of three men all more than twice his age—one of whom legally owns him, no less. “Mam got word to me—he’s spoken of leaving Philadelphia for more southern climes. You’re not the only one who’s come down, sir: there are a few in the inns and more coming from Boston. There’s talk of another plague like last year, and he’s frightened. If he leaves—he’ll take her with him, and I’ll never see her again.”

What he does not say, or perhaps does not know, is that any slave woman taken South will see her children taken out to the fields; that even if the master’s affections—such as they are—for her continue, a man who has sold one child of his own to pirates will think nothing of selling others to cotton or sugar farmers.

“Are there no,” Thomas begins but then falls silent. He’d been about to ask if there were not any innocents in the house who might unjustly contract the disease—but all those who live in the house of Erik’s father of their own free will directly benefit from those who live there under duress, and can any such people be called innocent?

Erik seems to hear the unspoken words, for he meets Thomas’ eye and says, “The mistress and her children stayed back in London, sir. There’s only him and the maids, and they’ve nothing to fear.”

Of course he would have thought of that. Of course he would be kinder to his master’s children than his master ever was to him—after all, they are his brothers and sisters. Thomas nods, shamed.

James hesitates as well, his eyes on Erik’s face. “You can’t take it back. Once it’s done, it’s done, and you’ll be forever changed. You’ll come back to this moment again and again, wondering at it—at yourself, and who you might have been if you’d chosen different. It will haunt you even if you don’t come to regret the choice, for you’ll be putting that different version of _you_ in the ground along with him.”

Erik swallows and yet still does not waver nor withdraws the request. Bending down, James picks up the thin blanket that John has been wrapping around himself every night. It isn’t visibly stained and while more humble than one might usually find on the bed of a fine Dutch merchant, it will bear up well enough short of close inspection. And what man thinks to examine his bed, so carefully made by his slave maids, before he climbs into it for a night of peaceful rest?

Thomas never did.

The blanket disappears into Erik’s satchel and Erik disappears into the twilight. Watching him go, John says, “He’ll be all right. A little murder is good for a growing lad.”

“Oh for God’s sake, John, don’t make light of this!”

“If the man saw Erik in the ton, he might very well make legal issue of our arrangement. I call this self-defense, and will present that case to Erik should he prove troubled by his actions. Personally, I doubt he will.”

“It’s still a man dead. He’s a boy, barely fourteen—”

“ _James_ killed his first when he was younger. And behold, he turned out well enough.”

That’s debatable, of course, but not by Thomas. He wonders but does not ask when John first killed a man.

It is a clear, hot night, and so they dare to go outside. There’s a bit of clear land just to the south of their street and Thomas leads the way, setting a lantern in the grass while James sets about the grim but necessary task before him: divesting John of his curls. Like Samson, it seems a terrible violation, but they must be able to inspect his scalp for infected pustules.

James and Thomas are both far more bothered by this necessity than John, it seems, who submits to the shears with a shrug and the jest, “Would you like to have a funeral for the shorn?”

They do burn the discarded hair on a makeshift pyre, more inspired by caution from the pox than sentiment. Running a hand over his head and neck, John sighs with audible relief. “You must both forgive me for not sharing in your grief. Christ, it’s good to feel a breeze on my neck.”

James takes a seat in the grass on Thomas’ other side, saying as he does so, “Best hope it grows back quick. When we passed our first winter here, my hair was short as you last saw it in the Georgia colony, but this is far more northerly and colder than Georgia. My ears near froze off—I became a prodigious wearer of hats.”

“You did look quite charming in your Monmouth cap,” Thomas puts in.

James scoffs and the three of them lapse into silence. The sky above is filled with stars, undimmed for once, as few people want to light candles in this heat. Privately Thomas wonders what James and John see as they gaze upwards, for while he can mentally trace the edges of the Greek constellations that he adored as a child, they spent years navigating by the same stars, sometimes under the most dire of circumstances. And all the while, Thomas was less than three days sail away. The stars knew all along, of course, but what do stars care for the lives of men?

John is the one to break the peaceful stillness: “You haven’t asked about the chest.”

He cocks his head at them both. The light of their lantern shines glassy in his eyes and Thomas winces internally; he’d hoped for another day, maybe more, of respite before the second fever set in. It is the far deadlier of the two.

On Thomas’ other side, James stirs. “Perhaps I am tired of asking and am waiting for you to tell me whensoever the mood strikes you.”

John chuckles. The sound catches on phlegm in his throat, which Thomas cannot help but catalog. Somewhere in his mind is a scale not unlike the one used by the Egyptians’ god of death, its two sides weighing every mark on John Silver’s skin and the storm yet growing underneath against the determination of Thomas and James. Every symptom tips the scales one way or another, deciding his fate.

He wishes to hell that he knew which side of the scale John Silver’s mood currently stands on.

“And when do you expect this shockingly uncharacteristic display of honesty to occur?” John asks.

“Well, you’ve just brought the topic forth which I imagine means you have something prepared. Would you like to share it or would you like me to guess?”

John’s eyes hood themselves and he drops his gaze to the darkened grass. “No,” he says, but then continues, “I merely…was visited by a certain apparition, just now, that circles by every so often.”

“And what apparition might that be?” Thomas asks before he can think better of it. Once he does, he glances at James, whose face has drawn tight. Between the two of them lies several cemeteries of restless dead.

“A question, one which has plagued me since the events on Skeleton Island.” John’s voice has dropped half an octave. Thomas thinks, _Oh no_ , and sits up a little straighter between them. “It came to me first the night after I had surrendered you to Ogelthorpe and the gates closed behind you. The Lion was bound for the Maroon Island and Madi; you had returned to the arms of your beloved; in Nassau a treaty was already being written which would secure a few years of peace before England decided it was unsatisfied with the terms. My plan for you all, my great betrayal of your trust, had worked.

“And yet on the edge of sleep I found myself brought back to full waking, caught in the reliving of the last few days and presented with a question to which I had no answer. To which I could not secure an answer no matter how I tried, for you were the only one who knew its truth, and I had just sent you beyond my reach.”

He looks at James. Even drawn with sickness and covered in pox, there is something terribly compelling about him. Not handsome, exactly, not in this moment of sweat and pus, but very much like what a flame looks like to a moth. This is the face of a man who could do anything, and Thomas feels a bolt of sympathy both for James and John’s wife, who saw in him the potential for a great leader of men.

The kind of leader that John has never, ever wanted to be.

“Why did you shoot Dooley?” John asks James.

Who blinks, and answers in a puzzled voice, “Because he was going to shoot you.”

“ _Really_?” John draws the word out and ducks his head, smiling at James. “You see, I confess I find myself skeptical of that answer. As your chosen replacement for my confidence, Dooley helped you carry the cache into the forest—helped you put it in the ground. By killing him, you positioned yourself as the only person who knew its whereabouts, which granted you a great deal of negotiating power with me, the crew, and Woodes Rogers.”

“All right,” James growls. “Yes. I did plan to kill Dooley at some point, for that very purpose. But in that moment, when I saw him drawing his pistol behind you, I did not think of that. I only thought that I loved you, and you could not die.”

“You _loved me_ ,” John repeats. Very nearly _sneers_ it at James. “I was trying to kill you, I sent six of our best men to hunt you down, I drew my own weapon with intent to run you through myself, but you killed Dooley, the only man on the island who could potentially reveal the placement of the cache and thus derail your plans, because you _loved me_.”

“Yes. Tell me, in all of these long nighttime revisits of our past, have you never wondered why Madi disliked me so profoundly at first?”

“What the fuck does Madi have to do with—”

“She knew I loved you. We talked about it.”

“James,” Thomas says. The night around them is quiet, but they are far too exposed.

“You and Madi talked about it,” John repeats in a dangerously level voice.

“Yes.” James has an equally dangerous jut to his chin.

“When.”

“At the Maroon camp, before we sailed for Nassau. She had…noticed certain things and confronted me about them. I told her the truth, as I am telling you now. So I will not have you disbelieve me on this, not when I was willing to kill a man rather than see you harmed. For fuck’s sake, Silver, you could just as easily argue that in that moment, Dooley was my only ally on the island against you, the crew, and Woodes Rogers, and I killed him to save you!”

“You,” John stumbles, pausing to giggle, “you and Madi _discussed_ the fact that you were in love with me, and you both, what? Didn’t see fit to tell _me_?”

“I thought you knew!” James barks. “You knew about Thomas, and you’ve always been extraordinarily perceptive about everything else I’ve ever done or felt. I thought that by not speaking of it or forcing me to do the same, you were being kind.”

“ _Kind_? When the fuck have you ever known me to be _kind_? From the very beginning, the _first second_ you laid eyes on me, you knew me as a thief who had stolen from you, killed a man for it with his own sword. I stole from you again and again, the gold and the men—do you know when I learned that Thomas was in Savannah? You haven’t asked that, either. Perhaps you fear the answer. I knew for _days_ , for a _week_ or more, and until Madi was returned to me I conspired to keep you two apart simply because I feared being alone.

“Perhaps you’d like to revisit the subject of the chest underneath your bed? Have you not wondered when I learned of the treasure that I’ve brought here, that you’ve so _helpfully_ stowed away? I had the letter describing its provenance for the last two years. Did you think that I came to your door out of naught but desperation to see you? If so, let me dissuade you both now: I arrived here with full intent to make use of _your_ desperation, your lowly means and whatever charity I might glean from our past associations, in order to secure this prize, at which point I would simply… _disappear_ , back into the sea.”

James’ gaze is steady; his mouth is a grim line. He asks: “Anything else?”

“Yes,” John answers with a smirk. “There always is. There always will be. That’s what you invited into your home when you let me stay here. I warned you about it again and again, and yet you didn’t listen and now here is the snake, in bed with your beloved. Perhaps the real question should be, do you ever regret not letting Dooley kill me?”

“Well, I don’t know who the hell Dooley is,” Thomas puts in, deciding that this has gone on long enough, “but as someone else who loves you very much, I for one am heartily glad that James shot him. Also, lower your _fucking_ voices.”

That startles John out of the dark place to which he was plummeting and dragging James along. Thomas leans in and presses his advantage before John can regroup. “If we’re going to talk of snakes then please do allow me the liberty of eating whatever apple you wish to place between my teeth. You may both think me a passive damsel to be protected from your mutual sins but I would like to remind you that you were sleeping in front of our fire until I brought you to our bed, and _you_ ,” he shoots a quelling glare at James, who makes to speak, “were a staunch and staid Lieutenant who had visited a mollyhouse naught but once to relieve your true desires. And yet here we are.

“Furthermore, if we are going to talk of beloveds, know this: you tried to kill James, you betrayed and imprisoned him, and yet I love you. Did you think that we’ve taken you to our bed out of something like convenience? Or boredom? Perhaps you think we did it to earn your trust and thereby secure a larger portion of the gold you’ve promised us. Or worse yet you imagined some unknowable quantity, a hidden price that only we knew and would demand at some point in exchange for all of this care. Or perhaps you imagined nothing at all, but only assumed without thought that all tenderness has a price, against which you have been bracing yourself. But let me now assure you: there is no price. You have our love and you owe us nothing, and nothing you can say or do, or have done already, will remove our hearts from your hands. You can do with them that what you will.”

“ _Why_?” John demands almost plaintively.

“Is it really so difficult to understand? To hear James tell the stories, you made half the beasts and cut-throats of the Caribbean eat out of your palm.”

“That was different. I needed them to follow me.”

“And Madi?” James asks. “Was your marriage built strictly on what you advantage you could gain over her?”

A shadow passes over John’s face. “A little,” he confesses, hardly more than a whisper. “At first.”

“Well, she was a beautiful princess. Any man would have desired her favor. Hell, given time I expect I would have, as well.”

That clearly distracts John a moment, as his eyes go unfocused, viewing images that Thomas can well guess at: the same kind that occasionally send Thomas into a reverie.

There’s the susurrus of grass as James rocks up onto his knees and moves closer to John—slowly, as the moment warrants. It is remarkable, Thomas thinks as he watches them in the lantern light, how wrong everyone was about the two of them—even they had so thoroughly misunderstood their relationship. They thought themselves of one mind, but are very nearly opposites: instead, Thomas thinks, it must have been Silver seeking out Flint, trying to find the best way to ingratiate himself and fit into the captain’s plans. In matters of the mind, Silver has no equal at discerning Flint’s meaning and intentions, save _perhaps_ for Thomas himself. Flint, after all, is not so different from James.

But the reverse has clearly never been true. James’ hold on John is not one of the mind, at all.

“I love you,” James says and John shudders, pushing his face against James’ chest like a hare going to ground to hide from pursuit. “I have loved you a long time. I’m sorry I did not tell you a thousand times rather than have you doubt it for one moment.”

 “Do you want to hear something truly terrible?” John mumbles, low enough that Thomas can barely hear. “I think I did know. I think that’s part of why I betrayed both you and Madi, because I couldn’t bear the idea of you both loving me. Flint, Flint—you should ask me about the fucking chest.”

“No,” Flint growls. “You tried to make me hate you before and couldn’t manage it. Whatever you’ve done now, you cannot make me regret loving you. You’ll tell us because you want us to know and not a moment before.”

John shudders again, with more force this time. His teeth chatter audibly. Frowning, Thomas takes hold of the lantern and puts his other hand on John’s back. “Come, my great and terrible lovers. Aceso awaits us and will have her due.”

-o-

The second fever comes.

It is worse.

They lay John in the center of the bed, where even if he thrashes they will have time to keep him from falling over the side. From there it is a constant struggle to cool him with damp rags, even as he begs them for a blanket, or clothes, anything. The sores have begun to erupt and weep pus that stains the sheets, and they pain him terribly.

It is piteous and even more so when John begins to forget to speak English and falls into Spanish and then even further into a faltering tongue that must have been his first. It isn’t quite the Ladino that Rebekah speaks to him; it sounds closer to Greek, perhaps.

“Don’t fucking look at me like that,” James growls. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Pass me that fucking cup and go make some bread

James’ dark mood grows bleaker with every drop of sweat and every foul macule on John’s brow, and Thomas sets his curiosity aside. John’s more lucid moments are no respite, for then he recalls where he is and why, and chastises them more than once for keeping him alive. Several times he cries out, “I do not want this!” with broken rage and terror. More often he wavers somewhere in between sleep and waking, where delirium mixes the two.

Thomas knows from his time in Bedlam how dangerous those waters can be, and what special terrors await a mind who wanders there.

It’s a night when James is sleeping outside when Thomas is awakened by John’s mumbled, “Captain?”

Groaning, Thomas sits upright. John is propped on his elbow, his head lolling slightly as he peers around the room. “He’s outside,” Thomas whispers, reaching for the bedside table. “Can you drink some water?”

John twists away from the cup, still scanning the room. “Where’s Doctor Howell? I need the captain.”

“He’s outside. He needs to sleep.”

“No, I need to see him. He’s in danger.”

Thomas pauses. He would write this off as feverish rantings were it not for a buried pirate—or Thomas certainly _hopes_ that Silver finished burying him—somewhere in Society Hill. If not for the chest shoved under this very bed. By silent agreement, they have not yet broached that subject again since their conversation under the stars…but for once Thomas is a little more wary of John’s actions than James. “What kind of danger?”

John frets at the sheets, avoiding Thomas’ eyes. “Rackham’s going to kill him. They’ve got the gold, they’ll—I have to find him. They’ll kill him.”

“Jack Rackham hanged years ago,” Thomas tries, but John barely seems to hear him. He’s looking at the door then at the cup then at Thomas, all with the kind of wandering fear that seeks a source. Thomas puts down the cup. “Why would they kill the captain?”

“Because,” John stammers, his shoulders hunching in, “because…I lied.”

“To the captain?”

“Yes. Please don’t tell him.”

Thomas licks his lips. They are uncommonly dry and he wonders when _he_ last drank water. “I believe that depends on the nature of your lie. What untruth did you tell the captain?”

John doesn’t answer immediately. His glassy eyes stare into the dark before weaving back around to Thomas, who is instinctively moved to his side, wrapping one arm about his shoulders and cupping his jaw. John allows the touch passively, his eyes—glassy now with tears in addition to fever—fixed on Thomas’. There is something terribly childlike and beseeching in his expression—a boy begging for forgiveness.

He says, so softly that Thomas would not have heard at any greater distance: “There’s no one really in here.”

“What do you mean?”

“They made me up. Or I made it all up, to give them who they wanted. I’m not _real_.”

“You seem real enough to me, John.”

Either John does not find this answer sufficient or he is distressed by his own confession, for he twists away, clutching at his own head as his fear turns inward. No amount of coaxing will compel him to drink; indeed, he looks at the cup with a kind of frozen terror that Thomas knows too well.

It is too close to many things—Bethlem and Nathaniel foremost among them—and once James is awake Thomas cedes the room to him, retreating to the kitchen to scrabble together some kind of a meal. They do not have much left: some pickled beets and dried apples, along with stale bread.

“The pot forgives many things,” Thomas reminds himself, and sets about making a porridge.

-o-

The next two days pass in a similar manner as the fever ebbs and flows. By now several other doors in their row have been marked with white chalk, and James does the same to their own. No one wants to risk being accused of introducing the pox to their neighbors, which is quite possibly what happened, but with so many now afflicted it is easier to elide suspicion.

Still, the silence of their usually-busy neighborhood is disquieting. There is no busybody Mrs. Greenup nor the unnamed gentleman visiting his mistress and illicit child, nor any other footsteps crossing the cobblestones outside their door, until there is.

It’s Rebekah. She wears a cloth wrapped around her head into which she has tucked all of her hair. She also wears gloves and a neckerchief. “Are you not ready to faint?” Thomas asks as he ushers her in.

“It is to protect against the pox.”

“Truly! Has it grown that severe already?”

“Not so bad as last year, but fear drives such measures. The inns are all shut and few boats will enter the harbor. Those that do stay only long enough to unload their goods before they leave again. Mr. Aaron makes us wash our hands twice before entering the house, and he has boiled every linen, though none in his lodging have shown the pox.”

“A sensible man.” He gestures the rest, _Is he suspicious?_

 _He knows Marielena is not Jewish. Nothing more._ “He is kind to his family, and he will not see a Jew turned from his door.”

 _I worry_.

 _Do not, yet. I am in control._ “Here, I have brought some food. How is he?”

“Bless you. He is—it is the second fever. He bore up well through the first, so I find myself hopeful. Oh, that smells divine,” he exclaims as he investigates the small pot of soup that she produces from a sling across her shoulders. Additionally, she brings forth a stack of round white crackers.  

When Thomas cocks his head to ask, Rebekah merely smiles. “It is to make the meal. I will leave the dough to rise overnight and then you drop dumplings into the soup. He will know.”

“Thank you, but I fear that he will be unavailable to guide us.”

Rebekah focuses on crushing the crackers to crumbs. “It is not hard. Make him eat this as soon as the fever passes.”

It seems a better prescription than bloodletting or rotation therapy, at least. So often those who claim expertise have no more knowledge to offer than the oldest, simplest grandmother who recalls the recipe that _her_ grandmother made to see the children through the days when illness, hunger, or grief wore thin their spirits. Perhaps John Silver once ate from the ladle of such a grandmother, and was heartened. Thomas hopes so.

As they work, a voice rises from the bedroom. It’s so soft that at first Thomas does not hear—no, not so, he’s just heard so many similar utterances from that quarter in the last few days that the sound washes over him. He likely would have continued on at the task, cracking the wafers with both hands, had not Rebekah slowed in her own motions. When Thomas looks up, her head is turned towards the bedroom door, which sits only slightly ajar.

From beyond, John is mumbling softly in a language that is not Ladino, nor does Thomas recognize. John himself barely seems to speak the tongue: he stumbles over words and repeats certain phrases several times. From the slurring quality of his tone, he has once again slipped into that half-awake place from which the most plaintive, dangerous demons emerge. Thomas may not understand the words but he has certainly heard them several times in the last night.

When Thomas looks again at Rebekah’s face, her lips are parted.

“Do you know what he’s saying?” Thomas asks plaintively. He feels as worn as their sheets, boiled and scrubbed too many times. His eyes burn.

Rebekah makes no reply, merely stands listening before she wordlessly moves closer to the bedroom. Thomas drifts after her, his hands dusted with crumbs. The hallway is too narrow for him to stand at her side; Rebekah stands in the doorway looking towards the bed and Thomas watches her posture for some kind of clue. John’s voice rambles on. If James is awake, he remains silent.

Then, softly, Rebekah begins to sing. The words are not Ladino: they bear absolutely no resemblance to Spanish. The instant John hears them, however, he falls silent as if, even in his delirium, he understands them intimately.

Rebekah is no great singer, but her voice is sure. It rises and falls, and Thomas abruptly recognizes the cadence of John’s voice whenever he is telling a story.

The song is not a long one, and once it is over Rebekah stands waiting but for a moment. Then she turns away, smiles briefly at Thomas while almost making eye contact, and goes back out to the kitchen table to resume preparing her mysterious meal.

When Thomas peeps around the corner of the bedroom door, he sees James lying on his side, fully clothed; John rests against him, his back to Thomas, naked and visibly shuddering.

James’ gaze, when it finds Thomas in the doorway, is bleak; but the condition of John’s lesions is far more hopeful than James would seem to think. There is no confluence. Indeed, they look less inflamed than yesterday. “He hasn’t been scratching?”

James shifts backward far enough to let Thomas see John’s hands; they are bound together and wrapped in cloth. Meeting Thomas’ raised eyebrow, James points out defiantly, “He put me in _chains._ ”

“Fair,” Thomas admits after a moment, and they share a faint smile before Thomas goes back out to help Rebekah.

She leaves them with a strange, grainy dough that she tells Thomas to roll into ball-shaped dumplings in the morning. Thomas sets the soup pot on the fire to simmer overnight before he risks opening the front door for a breeze. The worst of the heat has faded but he still wears a kerchief around the back of his neck to dab his brow.

In Georgia, oh, he had suffered. They all had: if they had not been mad before, Bethlem would have made them so, but even a royal physician couldn’t hold a candle to the summer of a Georgian plantation for the ability to drive out rational thought and disorder a man’s thoughts.

Standing in the doorway, Thomas takes a few deep breaths, letting his eyes drift shut and the air move against his brow. The mugginess of approaching rain hangs on the eaves of the houses. Their row of bandboxes has been strangely silent of late, and once—if—their own danger has passed then Thomas will go door-to-door to discover whether any of their neighbors have fallen ill as well, and require tending. It’s also possible they are all simply remaining indoors during the outbreak, another sensible course of action. Apparently the people of Philadelphia have learned from their past mistakes. Now, if only they can continue in that vein.

Thomas wonders if Erik’s father has sickened. If he is already dead. He cannot find it in him to wish it so, nor to hope for his health.

Closing the front door and setting the latch, he finds his way through the darkened interior by memory alone until he passes through the doorway of their bedroom, where the air is still and a little uncomfortably fragrant with body odor and the tang of a chamber pot that wants for scrubbing.

James and John are still, dark shapes against the sheets. When Thomas reaches out a hand, John’s skin is cool to the touch. His breath comes easy and deep.

Closing his eyes, Thomas lets his head fall to the sheet. _For with thee is the fountain of life; in thy light shall we see light_.

-o-

When he wakes, John is gone from the bed. James lies flat on his back, dead to the world and snoring. The bindings that had been around John’s wrists sit on his chest.

Rising as silently as possible, Thomas ventures out into the parlor to find John leaning on his crutch, staring at the dough that awaits them on the table. Thomas leaves him be in favor of stirring the fire; he has come this far by trusting Rebekah’s guidance, and by God he will shovel strange dumpling soup down John’s throat if she says it will help.

Only once he has the pot of soup heating does he join John at the table. The pale, grainy dough is flecked with various green herbs. “Rebekah said you might perhaps provide some guidance in this task,” Thomas gently suggests.

As if rousing from a dream, John lifts his head. The macules around his face and throat have darkened and scabbed. “I’m going to live, aren’t I?” he asks.

“I believe so. Yes.” Thomas pauses, but when John’s only reaction is a slow blink, he takes a seat at the table and uncovers the dough. “Shall we?”

James, of course, does not share their emotional diffidence: when he emerges and hears a similar report, he embraces first John then drags Thomas into his arms as well. They have been careful throughout these two long weeks not to all touch at once; Thomas and James took turns caring for John while the other one boiled his clothes for the day and kept his hands scrupulously clean. James, of course, had more cause to leave, being a shopkeeper with orders and customers, while Thomas had more experience treating the disease; but both of them had been reluctant to leave John, even with each other nearby as caretaker.

Now they stand on either side of John and hold him between them. He trembles with lingering malady.

“It’s _matzah_ ,” he says against James’ collarbone. “The soup. I remember it.”

Gently, Thomas kisses the exposed back of his neck. “Rebekah said you would. Come, show us how to make the dumplings.”

Once they’ve eaten, James departs for his shop and Thomas leaves John propped up at the kitchen table, wrapped in a blanket and dozing, while he strips the bed for what he can only pray is the last time. The dried macules—having spent their wretched contents—will scab, now, and once the scabs have flaked off all that will remain are the scars. Thomas does hope they won’t be too severe: he loves John with one leg, covered in sweat and pus, and he knows that James feels very much the same way; but he also knows that John detests his stump and any other sign of infirmity in his own form. Already he is diminished in size from the three weeks of illness, his skin drawing tight across his cheekbones.

Though when Thomas reemerges with the sheets carefully bundled, rags gathered, chamber pot covered and balanced on one hip, John is shoveling matzah dumplings into his mouth two at a time. So hopefully that condition will be easy enough to fix.

Someone, at least, has set up a bonfire near the end of their street for the purpose of burning sheets and other sickbed materials. Thomas encounters a few other weary caretakers disposing of their own remains. Most are Quakers, bless them, who can always be relied upon to care for even strangers in times of need. Some weep, whether from simple exhaustion or the loss of their charges. Last year had been worse: they’d been flooded with refugees from Boston, most of whom had already been pox-riddled, and having no relations nor bearing more wealth than they could carry they had frequently sickened and sometimes expired in the open streets.

The news Thomas gathers is grim but not as dire as it could have been. Their landlady Mrs. Greenup has died from pneumonia; it isn’t immediately clear whether her illness was related to the pox outbreak. Few others in the city have perished and the eaves of every rooftop flutter with sighs of relief that this bout of the pox was not the worse kind in which the pustules ran together into one great sore.

And another joy awaits: Thomas returns to the bandbox with a few loaves of bread, jam, and eggs—eggs! Oh, how quickly he can be laid so low that eggs are a treat; or perhaps that is the Lord reminding him that even the lowest mouthful is a joy and a gift—to discover James and Erik and a young fellow by the name of Hamish whom James occasionally hires to assist in deliveries that are too large or cumbersome for James and Erik to manage alone.

Their current occupation is the unloading of a sizable bathtub from their cart. Benjamin the stalwart pony stands by patiently as the three of them huff and puff their way up the front walk; Thomas, uncertain if he would be more hindrance than help, trails after. The inside of their parlor seems especially dark after spending time out in the morning sun, and John is nowhere to be seen, hopefully retreated into the bedroom rather than fled their bandbox altogether.

Thomas might have quietly suggested to James that they hide his crutch until such a time as they are quite certain he will not do anything so rash as the laudanum. James was all too happy to comply.

The bathtub is a sizable creation and clearly brand new. When Thomas inquires as to its provenance, James puffs up a bit and says, “I made it. Was a commission, paid for in full, but after three weeks gone of taking up space in the shop, the owners are likely either perished from the pox or quit the city in a panic.”

“And if they return?”

“Then I’ll take it back.”

“Bold of you to presume that you’d ever be able to reclaim this from my clutches.”

James bares his teeth in a grin. His eyes are still smudged dark and he didn’t do much to trim his facial hair this morning, which has grown ragged in their weeks of toil. Gone is the careful way that he held himself when first he returned to Thomas: then, his knuckles had been split, his skin smeared with sweat, blood, and grime, and he had very nearly levitated in his effort to hide all these things, as if Thomas wasn’t browned by the sun with his palms covered in blisters.

James has been keeping Captain Flint gripped tight with both hands around his neck, and Thomas can understand why. So does John—he’d said as much to Thomas one morning over the rim of his teacup: “He thinks he’s protecting you from Captain Flint, but if pressed, I would warrant that you could do far more damage to the dear captain than the other way around.”

Thomas had contemplated that a moment then asked, “And what of civilization?”

“Oh,” John had answered with a dark smile, “the civilized world should always fear Flint.”

Now, James is bright and broad and handsome despite his scruff, as if the undomesticated life has stirred something dormant inside him, and Thomas unthinkingly touches his chest to indicate affection, then remembers that James is not Rebekah and laughs at himself a little. James catches the gesture and seems to understand, for he copies it, then glances over his shoulder and tips his head towards the darkened back hallway.

Thomas nods and the three of them depart, with James’ arm around Erik’s bobbing shoulders, listening to him discuss a recent piece of woodworking.

Filling the bathtub takes the rest of the afternoon, for water must be fetched from the well two streets over. By the third trip, John has reemerged. The crutch, unfortunately, is tucked under his armpit, which must pain him terribly; even diminished, pustules that bloom under the arm are very tender. His face does not show the slightest twinge, however, as he takes the bucket from Thomas with one hand and dumps it into the bath.

“After you,” he says with a rather courtly gesture.

Slipping into the cool water is bliss after weeks of sweltering in the heat. Thomas sighs, feeling muscles unwind in his back all the way down to his feet in a wave of sweet relief. He lets his eyes slip shut; on the other side of his closed lids, there’s a series of thumps and then something lands in the water near him, which upon investigation turns out to be one of the few clean rags left to their house. It appears to have once been a pair of breeches.

John drags a chair over to the side of the tub and sits. “Not all of us had such fine tutors as you, my Lord, so perhaps you’ll remind me—did Aceso have any servants? For if not, I think you…have earned the role.”

The levity of his tone is slightly marred by the pause he has to take in order to draw breath. Squeezing out the makeshift washcloth, Thomas sets about scrubbing himself briskly. “Aceso, Iaso, Panacea, Hygieia, and Aegle, the sisters of restoration, daughters of Aesclepius and granddaughters of Apollo himself. I do believe the pantheon is full on that quarter, and whatever help I offer is not divine in origin but born of simple, hard experience.”

He keeps his own voice light, as well, but John still reaches out to trail his fingers over Thomas’ shoulder, rubbing at a spot as if to give the pretense of helping him clean. “Panacea—the cure-all. Aceso, the moment of healing, Hygieia I can guess we’re in the midst of worshipping at this very moment. The others I do not know.”

“We also stand in the shade of Iaso, the goddess of recuperation from illness. Aegle is the beauty of good health and physical firmity.”

“Ah.” John smiles bitterly. “I must have failed to make good sacrifice to her at some point.”

Pausing in his ablutions, Thomas makes no reply other than to let his eyes wander over John’s form. Lets him see Thomas’ desire for him, undimmed and undeterred by anything that John would call a defect.

John’s pinkens and looks away, clearly wanting to argue the points but either not having the energy or the desire. Instead he sits quietly next to the bathtub until Thomas finishes, then solicitously retrieves a dry cloth—the remains of a shirt, perhaps?

Sighing, Thomas pulls on a fresh nightshirt—James’, from the smell of it. They will all desperately need to buy wardrobes after this: he would warrant that they’ve one full set of clothes between the three of them, and they can’t very well take turns going outside while the other two remain at home, much less once the ladies and Erik return.

He turns to find John standing next to the tub, looking down at the water and gripping the edges of the blanket tight around him with one hand. “Come now,” Thomas says gently, “I haven’t left the water that dirty, have I?”

John huffs a breath, yet still hesitates—until, his movements sharp, he strips off the blanket and the stained night shirt that he wears underneath. _That_ looks to be Thomas’ nightshirt, or was, anyway. Casting them both aside and leaning his crutch haphazardly against the chair, John haphazardly seizes both sides of the tub and eases in, his arms shaking with the descent.

Looking away, Thomas busies himself with hanging their improvised towel on the chair to dry. It is one thing to survive a hard thing and quite another to live through it only to return to something so ordinary as washing. And John, he knows, has a tumultuous relationship with his own body: to see oneself, naked and vulnerable, pock-marked and scarred and atrophied by disease, would be difficult for any man, much less one who has already spent years clawing his life from the jealous world with only three limbs.

When he chances to return his gaze, John seems to have crossed over the worst of it, though he sits slumped, seemingly already exhausted by this much effort. Retrieving the rag, Thomas draws the chair closer and dips it into the water.

When he applies it to the back of John’s bare neck, John makes a little _mmmn_ noise, though he does not lift his head. “To what other deities do I owe my continued existence?”

“Ah, well. We may have exhausted those of the Greek tradition, but there are more thing in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, my dear. Let us see—I believe the Romans added Febris, goddess and protector against fevers, and from the Marsi people they adopted Angitia, the snake goddess of healing. A great many snakes involved in the healing process of gods, it would seem.” John huffs a laugh and lists sideways until his head rests against one of Thomas’ forearms; Thomas pauses to cup a hand around John’s skull before continuing to wash his skin. “Endovelicus protected against public outbreaks of disease, so I suppose we’ve all to thank him.”

“Babalú-Ayé,” John murmurs.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Babalú-Ayé, called Sapona in the old country. Madi’s people both worshipped and feared him, for he was the spirit of smallpox.”

“Ah. They had one so specific?”

“And leprosy, and all other calamities of the flesh, which he inflicts on those whose transgressions have angered him.” The corner of John’s mouth quirks up, his most mercurial self seeming to return, an event for which Thomas finds he is not quite prepared. John has been more vulnerable and open with them in these days of sickness, a creature unguarded—for once—and while Thomas would most assuredly not wish the pox stay another moment, he is not quite ready for John to remaster his defenses.

And so: “John…when you awoke two nights ago, you said something to me that, try as I might, I cannot dislodge from my mind. Do you remember what you said?”

John looks up at Thomas with his abnormally short hair plastered to his head and a flicker of fear in his eyes. “No. I hope you’ll not give too much weight to the ravings of a fevered man.”

“You said,” Thomas persists relentlessly, “that you were not real. That _they_ made you up.”

For a long moment John does not answer. His cheek continues to rest against Thomas’ forearm. The only sound in the room is the drip of water as Thomas dips the cloth in the tub again and again, and waits.

“When first I left the Maroon encampment behind,” John begins, then falters. He starts anew in a softer voice. “When first I gave up on Madi ever taking me back, I went to Tortuga. Have you—has Flint ever told you about the place? If Nassau was wretched, Tortuga was a privy. For the most part men only went there to refuel, restock, or hide from the things they’d done, crimes which had them cast out from even the pirate crews. I went there to drink and lick my wounds while I determined where next to let the currents take me.

“I was there for two weeks. The sort of men with whom I rubbed elbows knew little of Long John Silver beyond Billy’s propaganda, and a peg leg was common enough that I passed without notice. It helped that I—I—there’s this thing that I do,” he continues at a faster pace, rushing the words out. “I don’t exactly mean to do it, and after I’ve been in my cups it happens automatically. When people speak a certain way, I copy them. Their accents, their cadence, the way they hold their mouths. Not even just their voices, though, the way they stand or point at things or the clothes they wear. I don’t mean to do it. It just happens.”

His tone is almost pleading, even as his gaze stays fixed on the edge of the tub. Thomas runs a soothing hand over his wet hair. “I had noticed you copy the head bob of the late Mrs. Greenup.”

John doesn’t appear to even hear him. “I was in Tortuga for ten days and I thought I might go to Brazil. There are Sephardim in Brazil, Madi told me about them. She wanted me to leave her alone. So I began to inquire about passage to the South, whether any ships might take on a cook of middling skill. Not many wanted an invalid on board, but I did find one man, a bosun to the Queen Esther, who agreed to speak to his quartermaster. He was a Jew, and he—he made some comment. I can’t remember what he even said, I was quite drunk, but it was something about me not sounding much like a Jew. I’d spent ten days among the refuse of the world and I sounded enough like the rest of them not to draw attention to myself, but that meant, to him, I sounded like a pretender. I had to offer to show him my cock before he agreed.

“I remember walking back to my flea-infested little room and…I think I was trying to think of what a Jew would sound like. And then—God, like a bolt of fire from above, I realized I couldn’t remember what _I_ sound like.” When he lifts his eyes, Thomas can see the whites. “This voice. This one that I’m speaking with right now. John Silver. It isn’t real, either, but—it’s the only version of me that has ever _mattered_ to anyone. This was what I sounded like when I tried to be the sort of person who Flint and Madi could love— _God,_ God, I wanted them to love me, and yet…it slipped away so easily. Ten days in Tortuga and it took me half an hour in my room, talking to myself, to find that voice again.

“So the next day I went out and found a parrot. A green macaw. Beautiful bird, hated my guts. On the ship back to the Maroon Island with a proposal for the Bristol Inn, I taught her to copy a few phrases in my voice, in exchange for dried berries.” The cracked lesion at the corner of his mouth quirks upward again. “I named her Flint.”

“Christ, John,” Thomas murmurs. Leaning down, he presses his lips to John’s forehead, to his cheek, to his lips, paying no heed to any scabs. His heart cracks in his chest.

“I don’t want to be nothing again,” John whispers into Thomas’ mouth, like he can’t bear the secret to escape any further than that, ever again. “I’d rather be dead.”

“You will be neither,” Thomas informs him fiercely. Vows it.

 

 

 ___________

 

-Christoph Sauer, abolitionist, printer, doctor, tailor, badass. <https://pennsylvaniahistory.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/slavery-in-colonial-pennsylvania/>

-The letter telling of buried pirate treasure on Society Hill is real. Furthermore, they have no idea to whom the letter was addressed, only that it was sent from Jamaica; nor do they know what became of the potential treasure. <http://www.phillyvoice.com/treasure-buried-beneath-society-hill/>

-The first almshouse (an institution to serve the healthcare needs of those who couldn’t afford to pay a doctor) was built in Philadelphia in 1732. It later became Philadelphia General Hospital. <https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/nhhc/nursing-through-time/1700-1869/>

-Doctor Thomas Sydenham was considered the father of English medicine. Among his many achievements, he noted that there was a higher mortality rate among wealthier smallpox patients than the poor, who couldn’t afford treatment; this revealed exactly how ineffectual—and indeed, harmful—contemporary treatments were (bloodletting, cooling, drinking beer, etc.) at treating smallpox. <https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/17th-century-smallpox-treatment>

-Monmouth cap: <https://www.history.org/history/clothing/men/images/monmouthcap.jpg>

-Erik mentions that both Rebekah and Marielena are wearing headscarves while staying in a Jewish household. Tichels are worn by married orthodox Jewish women; they are both pretending to be married.

- _Marrano_ is a Spanish word for a Jewish person who converted to Catholicism under duress, particularly when faced with the expulsion from Spain. In a modern context it’s considered a pejorative. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marranos>

-The prayer that Rebekah sings is _Mi Shebeirach avoteinu_ , a Jewish prayer for healing, a modern version of which can be found here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX5TWsfykSs>

-The Queen Esther was a real pirate ship that operated in the Caribbean. Little is known of the crew other than they were predominately Sephardim. <https://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Jewish-pirates-of-the-Caribbean-447397>

-The Blue Anchor Inn <https://libwww.freelibrary.org/digital/item/pdcc00041>

-Babalú-Ayé <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babal%C3%BA-Ay%C3%A9>

**Author's Note:**

> IN THIS CHAPTER:  
> -The characters falsify the purchase of Erik, an enslaved boy, in order to keep him safe  
> -John Silver gets smallpox (but survives)  
> -John Silver tries to kill himself with a laudanum overdose, and fails  
> -There is an unfortunate amount of pus  
> -Erik uses a smallpox blanket to kill his shit of a father, who tried to sell him to pirates last chapter


End file.
